An Ethical Struggle: When Does an Animal become a Meat?

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“True noble animal, I hope you felt no pain.”

– Anthony Bourdain

In the “Cajun Country” episode of Anthony Bourdain’s television program No Reservations, he seeks to discover the roots of the Cajun people of Lousiana. Bourdain travels to New Orleans to see the birth of jazz and the resurrection of classic cuisine. On this expedition Bourdain paints a vivid, sometimes disturbing, picture of what life in Louisiana looks like without its sequins. Continue reading

Finding Comfort in the Culinary

enchilada plate

Cheese Enchiladas with Spanish Rice

“When disaster struck, it didn’t surprise me that the people of New Orleans yearned more than ever for that taste of home…”

––Amy Cyrex Sins

After the floods caused by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleanian Amy Cyrex Sins was left with a deep sense of loss from both her destroyed home and, more poignantly, her devastated recipe collection. In her essay, “Doberge Cake after Katrina,” Sins longingly reminisces about such family classics as cheesy “Birthday Chicken” and, of course, “light, fluffy, and moist” Doberge Cake (45). Sins goes into detail about the specific foods and memories of her hometown, but she is ultimately writing about the same hunger we all feel when we are away from home and can’t find comfort on our foreign plates. Continue reading